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Presidential Healthcare Reform Rhetoric: Continuity, Change & Contested Values from Truman to Obama. By Noam Schimmel. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 313 pp.
Health care is one of the most controversial issues in American society, exposing a significant ideological division between the two dominant political parties. This issue is a peculiarly American phenomenon, because virtually all industrialized nations around the globe regard health care as a right, not a choice. Actually, in the United States, the term universal health care is frequently perceived as a socialist idea, implying a violation of the American ideal of liberty. The ideological and political battle over the fate of Obamacare since the arrival of the Trump administration in 2017 (as well as throughout the 2016 presidential election) has highlighted these issues, forcing Americans to debate whether health care is a privilege or an inherent entitlement.
It is in this context that Noam Schimmel's Presidential Healthcare Reform Rhetoric provides an historical, political, and moral analysis of why the issue of state-sponsored health care has become a pivotal part of the limited-versus-big government debate. Schimmel examines the rhetorical imaginary that four Democratic presidents (Truman, Johnson, Clinton, and Obama) employed over the last 70 years in an attempt to expand the affordability of and access to health care. His stated aim is "to explore the continuities and...